


Girls and [X] in Eastern Paradise

by TheVulpineHero1



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Drinking, F/F, Fluff, Humour, Love Letters, No Plot, Non-Chronological, One Shot Collection, Slice of Life, idk dude I'm basically just exploring Gensokyo because I love it, various pairings - Freeform, zany schemes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28978932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVulpineHero1/pseuds/TheVulpineHero1
Summary: A collection of oneshots/non-continuity Touhou stories, featuring fluff, mild to moderate shipping... you know, the usual kind of thing.
Relationships: Hakurei Reimu/Kirisame Marisa, Kirisame Marisa/Alice Margatroid
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Hakurei Miko and Domestic Witch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This collection is more or less just a vehicle for me to get to know my interpretations of the characters, by gradually building them up over a period of time. I love Touhou and Gensokyo as settings; life has taken me away from them in recent years, and I'm trying to get back in touch.

“Oi, Alice. You mind if I stay here for the night?”

“Of _course_ I mind. If you need a place to sleep, why not just go to the shrine like usual? Or better yet, clean your house.”

“The shrine’s a no-go tonight. I got her good and mad this time.”

 _If that’s the case_ , Alice thinks, _you could stand to sound less happy about it._

With great reluctance she opens her door, in the knowledge that Marisa will find her own way in if she doesn’t. Actually, that would be the best case scenario. Nights in the Forest of Magic are cold and dangerous, especially for a lone human. Even if that lone human is a witch. And she wouldn’t want to inflict Marisa’s house on anybody, not even its owner.

“Thanks, Alice. I’ll make it up to ya at some point.”

As soon as the door swings open, she breezes in as if she owns the place – although she at least takes off her boots at the welcome mat. Her socks have holes in them again, Alice notes, and instinctively she wonders where she left her needle and thread. She can’t see a hole and not want to darn it. It’s against her nature.

“Evenin’, ladies. Lookin’ good as always,” Marisa says, nodding at the dolls sitting on the shelves. She jerks her head back at Alice. “Any of ‘em running around by themselves yet?”

“Not to my knowledge, no,” she replies stiffly. “It will likely take a lot more work before we reach that point.”

“Eh. Well, no reason not to be polite, just in case.”

It is one of Marisa’s eccentricities – perhaps a charming one – that she’s more respectful with the dolls than with their owner. Maybe it’s just a sense of unity. She’s short, so much so that Alice has to look down when speaking to her, and with her mass of curled, blonde hair, she looks almost like a doll herself. Well, she would, if she would just keep her clothes in good order. Many a fine dress has suffered to enable Marisa’s adventuresome ways, and no doll on Alice’s shelves would be caught wearing things with such obvious scratches and tears.

Again her hands itch for the needle and thread. Later, perhaps, when Marisa is in her bedclothes; for Alice, sleep is just a habit after all, and there’s no harm in having something to occupy her at night.

“Have you at least eaten?” she asks.

“Sorta? I didn’t really get to finish.” The witch ambles to the dining room, pulls out a chair, and seats herself primly. Her posture is immaculate. All that time over at the Scarlet Devil Mansion has taught her proper table manners, when she cares to use them. “Don’t suppose you got any Japanese food in the pantry?”

“No. You’ll have to settle for bread tonight.”

“Dang. Well, gotta up my bread counter by one, I guess.” She kicks her feet at the table, as if waiting for Alice to sit down. “You gonna ask what happened?”

“No. You’ll tell me whether I ask you or not. And if you don’t, I’m sure that miko will complain about it to me sooner or later.”

Reimu, technically, was a peacekeeper and arbitrator of most serious disputes in Gensokyo. But Marisa had done more for diplomacy in the region than any miko could, and she did it by giving everybody something they could agree on: that seeing a kleptomaniac witch scuttling out of your front door with her pockets full of knick-knacks was _extremely_ irritating. Give two youkai something in common to bitch about, and they’d be fast friends before long at all.

“Tch. You’re not excited at all? Man, Alice. You’ve got not soul.”

“Why should I be excited? You two argue every other day.”

“I don’t usually get kicked out, though.” Again, she seems disproportionately pleased about it. All but beaming.

Of course, Alice thinks, their fights are going to get more serious. They’re getting older. Children are quicker to fight and quicker to forgive, but the older you get, the more room you have inside you for grudges. Well… That’s what she thinks, anyway. It’s not like she’s an expert in children, or even in humans, anymore.

“Very well then. Since you’re plainly dying to let me know, you might as well start telling your story.”

Marisa eyes gleam. She loves telling tales – tall or otherwise – of her adventures. You can never tell how much fact there is in any one thing she says, but strung together, they make a fine enough yarn that people listen anyway.

“Well, I was relaxing at the shrine just like always–”

 _Just like always_. Alice clicks her tongue. Marisa has never understood how _rare_ that is. There are all kinds of youkai that want to visit the Hakurei Shrine – for festivals, for gossip, for companionship. None of them get in without an invitation or a donation (usually in the form of food, or better yet, booze). Alice herself brings a basket of pastries every time she walks up the steps. To be able to wander in, day after day after day, consistently empty-handed… There are youkai that are jealous of that.

“Huh? You got somethin’ to say?”

“I was just thinking, you might be want to be careful of bridge trolls.”

“Eh. They’re nice enough, once ya get to know ’em. Anyways, I was just relaxing at the shrine, right? And Reimu says, ‘Wait a minute. I just received some really good tea leaves from a visitor’, and she makes us both a cup of tea, right?”

Alice says nothing. She can tell where this is going.

“So I take a sip, and I say: ‘Just as expected, you made the tea too hot like usual.’”

Yes. It’s exactly as Alice expected.

“So she says, ‘Quit complaining about my tea all the time! If you don’t like it, then don’t drink it!’ And I say, ‘you always make it for me, so I gotta drink it. It’s called being a guest, right?’”

Something so minor, so _trivial_ , it wouldn’t even count as a lover’s tiff.

“So she says, ‘Fine, I’ll quit making you tea then!’ and I say, ‘Nah, just quit makin’ it so hot. There’s no point having fancy leaves if you’re just gonna boil the life out of them’. And that’s about when she threw me out.”

She’s never heard such a complete _nothing_ of an argument. Other people quarrel about lovers they killed a hundred years ago or ancient mystical treasures they lost, but Marisa and Reimu sit there and squabble about green tea. It’s maddening.

“So, what do you think?” Marisa asks.

She still has the satisfied smile on her face, like she’s looking for a pat on the back. Alice sighs.

“Well, you could have avoided it by keeping quiet.”

“Why would I do that?” Marisa asks, apparently genuinely nonplussed. She’s swinging her legs again; she can’t sit still for more than five minutes. “Reimu not bein’ able to cook is one of her best qualities, right?”

“What kind of logic is that? You have it backwards.”

“ _Me_ bein’ able to cook is one of my worst points? I don’t get it. You sure are a weird one, Alice.”

“Now that’s just wilful ignorance…”

She grumbles, but serves the food anyway. Conversations with Marisa are always hard work, but always _interesting_ as well. Once you grasp that – learn to let go and embrace the strangeness as a passive observer, rather than somebody who’s being dragged along against their will – it’s not so bad. Though it does help to make sure you’re speaking on your own terms, not hers.

She refuses to ask why Marisa is so happy about having a blazing row with her best friend. If you ask a witch a stupid question, she’ll give you back a stupid answer – and Marisa is witch enough for that. It’s not worth the trouble.

The rich scent of black tea fills the room. Her hands are perfectly still as she pours three cups – one for her, one for Marisa, and one for the dolls. They never drink it, but just like Marisa likes to greet them when she walks in, she likes to leave the option open that they might take a sip of their own accord when she isn’t looking.

The conversation turns to other matters – reagents, spell formulas, and rare magical items. Shop talk. It’s interesting, but not dramatic. In the back of her mind, she is running the numbers on Marisa’s story – how much of it is true. How much of Marisa’s behaviour is an act. What it might mean, if it means anything. In a way, Marisa has already paid her back for the night’s lodging; when it comes to magicians, a puzzle is as fine a gift as any other.

When Marisa is asleep – oddly soundly, and always smiling – she finds her wicker basket, and turns on the oven. After all, she only has half the pieces. Tomorrow, she’ll go up to the Shrine and find the other half.

* * *

The best feature of the Hakurei Shrine is, of course, the polished wooden floorboards on the veranda. Nothing else even compares. They are lovingly maintained by none other than Suika; if you visit early enough in the morning, you can see her at work, organising drunken bobsled races with cleaning cloths for sleds and miniature versions of herself as both drivers and sled dogs. It’s something every true citizen of Gensokyo should endeavour to see at least once in their lives.

The rest of the Shrine is not so grand, even in the dazzling mid-morning sun. The weeds, which are not lovingly maintained by anyone in particular, bloom in every gap where Reimu can’t be bothered to pick them, which is, of course, all of them. The offering box is the picture of emptiness, on a level that can scarcely be imagined; one need not see, or even _hear_ the offering box to know it is completely barren. It has fully understood and embraced the concept of emptiness, as Buddhism demands. (A pity, of course, that it’s a Shinto shrine.)

Possibly the least welcoming thing is Reimu herself, who is in an extremely foul mood. It’s easy to tell because she’s pretending that she isn’t.

“Oh, Alice,” she says, sitting up slightly on her cushion, teacup in hand. Her face snaps into a rigid, unnatural smile. “Nice to see you.”

Alice strokes a curl of hair from her face, and tries very hard to return the sentiment. Reimu, if she took care of herself, would be the picture of an an eastern beauty. Of course, she doesn’t look _bad_ as she is; the raw material is definitely there. But it is hard to look at her and not understand that she is squandering her potential through lack of effort, something that extends well beyond skin-deep. For Alice, who finds herself something of a perfectionist, it can be difficult to watch.

“I’ve brought gifts,” she says. This is the best way to approach the Hakurei Miko: no pretences, and no time wasted. “I thought we could chat for a bit while we enjoy them.”

“Suspicious,” Reimu pronounces immediately. Her smile – already tenuous at best – collapses into a grumpy frown. “Aren’t magicians meant to be shut-ins?”

She’s not _exactly_ wrong; magicians aren’t known for their garrulousness, and Alice herself isn’t one for idle chatter most of the time. But Patchouli provides a fine example of what happens when a witch devotes herself too wholly to research, and fails to uphold social graces. Alice is keen to avoid following in her footsteps.

“I have tarts,” she says.

Reimu’s eyes narrow, but she is unable to keep the faint note of hope from her voice. “The ones with the apricot jam?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Reimu pats the warm wood at her side, eyes sparkling. “I can make a little bit of time for you. Come on, sit down. Tea?”

She is already filling a cup before Alice has a chance to reply. She pours like a veteran of tea ceremonies: graceful, efficient, without even the slightest tremble in her hands – although the tea, of course, was brewed too hot. As soon as Alice puts down the basket, she unceremoniously begins to rummage through, noting the contents with approval.

“Mmm. As expected, your baking is excellent,” she says, after taking her first bite from one of the tarts. There are still crumbs of pastry on her lips. She hastily stuffs the rest into her mouth, and for all the world, she reminds Alice of a hamster or a squirrel, stuffing her cheeks with provisions for the winter.

It’s charming, in its own way. There’s a limit to how audacious and scruffy one girl can be, of course, but Reimu is surprisingly adept at finding that line and staying there. Perhaps that’s the reason she has so many ‘fans’ in the youkai world, and why so many of them are odd in their own right.

Alice takes care to sip her tea as Reimu eats, given that it’s been a hot-button issue lately. It’s better than usual, although not by much.

“Ahhh… You know, you should drop by more often, Alice,” the shrine maiden carries on, when she has momentarily sated her lust for sugary baked goods. Incidentally, the 180-degree mood swing is a speciality of hers. “You’re actually _good_ to talk to. Everybody else just comes here and complains.”

Actually, Alice has barely said a word, which she rather suspects is the appeal. Still, she’s not one to complain about her host being easy-to-please. “Actually, I did have something to raise. Not a complaint, per se, but an enquiry.”

“Ugh. Fine. What’s your problem?” Reimu asks, rescinding her praise as quickly as she gave it.

Alice pauses. Touches a handkerchief gently to her lips, not to wipe away food but to hide a smile. “Well, Marisa came to visit me last night. She needed a place to sleep.”

“Oh, I _bet_ she did,” Reimu mutters, glowering ominously and clenching her fists. Alice can see her knuckles whitening from here. Apparently all is not well in paradise. “And you let her, I bet. She’ll never learn her lesson if you do that. Just tell her to buzz off and sleep at her own house.”

“Would _you_ sleep at Marisa’s house?” she asks pointedly.

“I wouldn’t even _breathe_ in that house if I could help it.”

“There you go, then. Consider it an act of mercy.” Alice’s smile is polite, but cold. “She said you’d kicked her out after she criticised your tea.”

“And?” Reimu asks, chin sticking out defiantly.

“It’s rare of you to take action,” Alice begins, and allows herself to linger on that word meaningfully for a moment, “over something so trivial. I just wondered what the full story is.”

“I didn’t kick her out _just_ because she said I make the tea wrong. I kicked her out because she _keeps_ saying the tea’s wrong, every single time! I’m sick of it! And every time I cook, she criticises the food, too! ‘Oi, Reimu, you shoulda added more salt’. ‘Hey, don’t skimp on the pepper so much, you know?’ Give me a break! Like she’s got any room to complain. It’s not like _she_ can cook!”

“She can, actually,” Alice replies mildly.

“What?” is the miko’s flat response.

“Do you really think that brewing a potion is so very different from making a stew? Do you imagine that she would learn fire magic and then never apply it in the kitchen?” Alice asks, rolling her eyes.

“Have you ever actually tasted her cooking?” Reimu asks dubiously.

“I have. It’s good. Not excellent, but enjoyable enough.”

“Wh… That’s… Argh!” She thumps the surface of the veranda grumpily. “If she can _cook_ , why does she keep coming over here and making _me_ cook for _her?_ And then she has the nerve to complain about it afterwards when she could just make the damn food herself!”

Between the aura of malevolence and the dark muttering Reimu is doing under her breath, it seems that there is going to be a new and improved division of labour the next time Marisa visits the shrine. Try as she might, Alice can’t dredge up too much pity for her fellow witch; knowing Marisa, she’ll find a way to wriggle out of it anyway.

It would be unbecoming of her to take pleasure in Marisa’s suffering, of course. But even so, she can hardly wait to get home and break the news.

* * *

When she returns, the Forest of Magic is aglow with amber in the sunset. She leaves her basket, empty but for crumbs, in the entranceway of her western-style house.

Marisa is at the table, flicking through one of Alice’s books seemingly at random. She can read what she wants, provided she reads it in the house, an arrangement agreeable to both of them; it gives Marisa an excuse to visit, and means Alice spends less time hunting for her books.

“Hey. Ya visited Reimu, right?” Marisa asks. “She calmed down yet?”

“Not at all. In fact, she’s even angrier.”

“Ouch. What did you say to her?”

“I told her you could cook.”

Marisa responds with a sharp intake of breath, like she’s pulling a splinter out of her thumb. “Guess she didn’t take that one well, huh?”

“’Huh’ indeed. Although, I suppose that explains why you think her being bad at cooking is a good thing,” Alice says lightly. She takes off her shawl, letting the dolls spirit it away to the wardrobe where it belongs. “It’s something you’re better at than she is. And I bet you were happy just to get a rise out of her.”

She’s watches Marisa’s expression carefully. It’s easy to tell when Marisa is lying (because it is almost always), but the real trick is discovering what she’s lying _about_.

“I guess?” Marisa replies, surprisingly ambivalently. “It’s more about the _reason_ she’s bad at cookin’.”

“And that would be?”

“Nope, that’s all you’re gettin’, especially after you sold me out,” Marisa says, smiling ruefully. She snaps the book shut, and puts it on the table. “I’d better go and smooth things over before somebody riles her up even more.”

“Or you’re just going to eat more of her food.”

“You’re too cynical, ya know? But I might,” Marisa admits, rubbing her nose. “For the record, I kinda like Reimu’s cooking.”

“What?” Alice stops in her tracks; the dolls hover aimlessly at her side. “Well, she’s very much under the impression that you don’t. Apparently you tell her it’s bad, every single time.”

Marisa brushes past her, sits down, and begins the arduous task of tying her boots. She’s lost too many shoes to the demands of low altitude flights, so now she only wears footwear with laces halfway up the calves. “Oh, yeah. She can’t cook at all. But just because her cooking’s bad, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, ya know?”

“Your logic baffles me,” Alice replies brusquely; and then, with just a little more kindness, “Be careful on your approach. She may just shoot you out of the sky.”

“Heh. I know what to expect.” Her boots laced, the small witch picks up her broom and slings it over her shoulder as she steps out of the door. “Ciao, Alice. If I’m not back later, don’t wait up.”

“As if I would.”

Marisa shrugs as if it isn’t really something that concerns her, and takes to the air. Minutes later, she is just a dot on the horizon, no bigger than a bird returning home to roost. If she cared to watch closely enough, Alice could probably pick out the exact point at which the home-bound flight becomes frenzied evasive manoeuvres – although only barely.

Instead she retreats back into her home, to the study and to her dolls. The house has felt much livelier – much less _still_ – with Marisa here, even though it was only for a night. Perhaps she can use some of that foolish energy for a new innovation, if she strikes while the iron is hot.

As she shrouds herself in abstract concepts, she gradually forgets that the puzzle Marisa gave her is not fully complete. She doesn’t know the reason why Reimu is a bad cook, and why it’s so important to Marisa, but that is immaterial. She can’t waste energy on the squabbles of humans while there is magic to be done.

Alice toils; the candlelight gutters. And for one more night, the dolls sleep soundly.


	2. Hakurei Miko & Domestic Witch (Part 2)

The pursuit of knowledge is endless; a witch is one who has broken the limits of life to dedicate herself to it. As witches go, though, Alice is young, and there are still many things she does not know.

Like, for example, when _exactly_ it became fashionable to stand outside people’s houses and yell instead of knocking.

She allows herself to grumble a little as she pulls on her shawl and marches out into the hallway, the heels of her boots clacking on the polished wood. She is, as a rule, hospitable; although she does not court conversation, she has no ill will against travellers. But sometimes they interrupt her in the middle of a particular interesting passage, or force her to tie off whatever she’s making, and find her more brusque than strictly necessary as a result.

“May I help you?” she asks frostily as she opens the door.

She’s taken aback when, rather than a wayward huntsman or Marisa, the person standing at her doorstep is the Hakurei Miko. People visit Reimu. It doesn’t work in reverse. Anything dumb enough to force the miko off her porch and into the world of working adults usually ends up regretting it before very long.

She has her gohei in hand, as if to confirm that violence is, indeed, an option. Fortunately, it seems as though she’s happy to at least attempt the diplomatic approach – for given values of ‘attempt’ and ‘diplomatic’.

“Well, if you’re going to beg to help me, I won’t say no. Come on. Let’s get started.”

Alice recoils. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not excused.” Reimu’s voice is flat, but not entirely unfriendly.

“You could at least tell me what I’m meant to be helping _with_.”

“Cooking. I need a cooking teacher, and since you stuck your nose into my business last time, you’re it.” She puts her hands on her hips; her arms are just a little scrawny, so the effect is not as intimidating as she might hope. “Now come on. We’re starting with apricot tarts.”

There are so many things to object to that Alice doesn’t know where to start. That’s the problem with Reimu; she approaches everything like a danmaku match. Marisa may claim that danmaku is power, but Reimu knows the truth. Danmaku is not power. It is _force_ , applied from as many directions as possible all at once. It is disorientating, distressing. Highly effective.

“To begin with, I did not ‘stick my nose’ into your business. _Marisa_ stuck it there for me. She all but begged me to hear her out. Can you imagine what might have happened if she’d run into that tabloid crow before she did me?”

Reimu smirks – a soft, smug little smile. “Nothing, that’s what. Me and Aya have an agreement. My personal life stays out of her gossip mag, and in return, I don’t shoot her on sight. And I let her trade me a bottle of sake or two for some incident scoops, from time to time.”

“Yes, well. Secondly,” Alice says, wheeling around for another angle of attack, “why cooking? I had thought you’d just make Marisa do it. Didn’t you make her cook to make up for last time?”

Reimu’s face darkens. “Yeah. I did.”

“And? Just do that again. She stays at the shrine nearly every night.” Any way you look at it, in Alice’s opinion, it’s the ideal solution. Reimu would get to be lazy and enjoy some decent food for once, and Marisa would have the chance to enjoy finally being superior to Reimu at _something_ , even if it wasn’t danmaku. “What’s wrong? Was the food not good?”

“No. It was delicious,” the miko replies, through gritted teeth. “I _hated_ it.”

Alice fights the urge to roll her eyes. Rolling your eyes in front of Reimu is not recommended if you have teeth left to lose. “Why?”

“Because she came into _my_ kitchen and used _my_ stuff and she cooked better than me, that’s why! Seriously, what the heck’s with that? She makes me cook every single night, so I should obviously be better, right? I’ve got all the practice. But she blew me out of the water!” Reimu says hotly. Her honesty, just like her anger, is searing. “I’m not letting her stay at my house and be smug with herself over her cooking skills. No way.”

“So just cook for yourself. You ate it happily enough before.”

“But then she’s getting away with it.”

Getting away, Alice wonders, with what? Being good at cooking? Displaying a level of basic honesty about Reimu’s lack of ability? Truly, Marisa’s sins are varied and deplorable.

“So, here’s the plan. First, I get good at cooking. When I’m good at cooking, I won’t feel ashamed if I ask Marisa to do it. Which _means_ that I’ll basically never have to cook ever again,” Reimu explains loftily. “It’s foolproof.”

It’s also extremely concerning. There are different types of laziness; Reimu’s has always been the idle type, the stubborn refusal to do anything until forced. Irritating, but ultimately benign. This, however, is a calculated form of laziness: it is working hard now so you can be lazier in the future. It’s reading the school textbook on the first day so you know the answers for the rest of the year. In short, it’s–

“Just like a gap youkai,” Alice mutters.

Plans upon plan upon plans, all painstakingly worked out in advance so that the world can be controlled with nothing more than a nudge in the right direction. That isn’t what this is, but it’s where it ends. The witch can feel it in her bones.

But, she thinks, she should have at least _some_ faith in the Hakurei miko. Somebody has to.

“Thirdly,” she says, her voice quivering a little as she rejoins the conversation, “ _if_ I were to teach you how to cook, we would be starting from the _basics_. Certainly not apricot tarts.”

“Come on. I’ve been cooking for myself forever. I know the basics,” Reimu scoffs.

“If that were true, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Reimu smiles, which is usually a bad sign. It means that, whatever it is that’s coming, she won’t let you wriggle out of it without a fight. Fights against Reimu are not, typically, fights that you win.

Alice sighs. At least it’s an excuse to get out of the house.

* * *

Despite being a youkai, Alice is something of a celebrity in the human village. People know her for her puppet shows, for her calm and elegant bearing, and for her habit of gently guiding lost villagers out of the Forest Of Magic. It helps, of course, that she is outwardly human, and human enough in her habits; she’s more likely to make you lunch that she is make you into lunch, which goes a long way in the villagers’ estimations of her.

Reimu, however, is not so fortunate. To the villagers, she is the do-nothing miko of the youkai shrine, who consorts with the enemy and flashes her underwear after two bottles of sake. (How true the last part is is anybody’s guess. Nobody would ever admit to witnessing such a sight, if they have plans to continue living.) As such, she attracts a fair few suspicious glances as she trails in Alice’s wake.

It does predictably little to improve her mood.

“I don’t see why we’re going shopping,” she grouses, intentionally stepping on the hem of Alice’s dress wherever it trails. “I’ve got ingredients back home.”

“And they’re all awful,” Alice replies with a shudder. Reimu’s larder is a bleak and desolate place; things lurk there that are more terrifying than any youkai yet to squat at the shrine. It’s comforting that Marisa takes such pride in developing her poison immunity, because apparently she very much needs it.

“So what? They’re gonna be cooked anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

“It absolutely matters. Good ingredients are the single _easiest–_ ” she takes care to underline that word with her tone – “–way to improve your cooking. Selecting the right ingredients is just as much a cooking skill as anything you do in the kitchen.”

“Ehhh…. Are you sure there’s not some magic potion that you can just pour over the food and it makes it delicious?”

Alices thinks for a second. “There is one that I’ve heard of, but I wouldn’t recommend it. To begin with, it’s quite rare and difficult to prepare – buying normal ingredients is easier by magnitudes.”

Reimu’s eyes glint. “Well, that sounds like the _witch’s_ problem. If I’m not the one preparing it, it doesn’t matter.”

“For the record, I have none on hand,” Alice retorts dismissively. “Primarily because it’s intended as a lethal poison, and you die twelve hours after ingestion. Just enough time to rave about the food to your friends, and increase the number of victims.”

“Sounds twisted.”

“Not all witches are benign. Here’s our first stop.”

She pushes open the door to the general store, and politely nods her head at the shopkeeper’s greeting. Reimu trails behind her, acting every inch the petulant child; she is surprised when the shopkeeper greets the miko as well, although with a little less enthusiasm.

“Ah, Miss Hakurei. We’ve got some excellent produce in the bargain section,” they call.

At a glance, Alice can tell this is a barefaced lie. There’s _some_ decent produce in the bargain bin, true, but the majority of it is barely fit for compost – never mind human consumption. And yet, Reimu floats over as if attracted to it by a magnetic force. With a sideways glance at Alice, she makes at least an attempt to seem as if she’s looking things over for quality, although it hardly takes a genius to see that her eyes linger far longer on the price tags than the actual ingredients.

“I’m sure she can look them over another time,” Alice tells the shopkeep, not unkindly. “Today, we’re looking for something a little more fresh.”

The shopkeeper looks at Reimu, digging her way through the bargains, and then back to Alice. “Are we?”

“Yes. We are.” She snaps her fingers; a taut length of string, attached to Reimu’s left ankle, gleams as a surge of magic runs through it. With a jerk of her wrist, she pulls the wayward miko bodily into the conversation. “Come. I’ll teach you what to look for.”

With only her ward’s sullen muttering to distract her, Alice begins the process of picking out ingredients for a stew – something hearty, hard to ruin, and easy to let simmer without any actual active effort. She picks out the best example of each with her fine dollmaker’s eye, shows it to the miko, explains the rationale for her choice, and puts it into the basket.

When she adds the carrots, Reimu looks uncomfortable. When she adds the potatos, the miko looks alarmed. But it is when she reaches for a slice of fresh, well-marbled beef that the shrine maiden can take it no more.

“Alice! Are you crazy?” she hisses. “I can’t spend that much money on food!”

“What exactly would you spend it on, then?” Alice asks. To the best of her knowledge, nobody is stupid enough to try and charge rent for the shrine, so food is logically her sole regular living expense.

“Sake, of course.”

 _Hopeless_ , Alice thinks, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter how good a chef you are. If you cook trash, you just end up with trash. Think of this as a one-time expenditure for Marisa’s kitchen labour.”

“Right. Right,” Reimu says unhappily. “I don’t suppose you could go halves? I might… not have that much on me.”

Alice looks at the shrine maiden’s thin arms, and sighs unhappily. “I’ll pay for the meat. That’s all, though.”

Apparently, it is more than enough to put a rare, but beautiful smile on Reimu’s face. Not worth the price of admission, Alice thinks – but close enough.

* * *

Half an hour later they are back at home, and Reimu is looking warily around Alice’s kitchen. It is, of course, immaculate. Utensils hang neatly on hooks around the kitchen; little jars with fat cork stoppers are lined up on the counter-top, each one labelled in clear handwriting and full to the brim with herbs and spices. Her pantry is well-stocked and well organised – out of necessity, of course. A witch’s pantry is not just for cooking, and it wouldn’t do to mistake the poppy seed for the gunpowder, or the flour for the arsenic.

If she had a slightly less lazy understudy, she would have taken a trip over to Eientei, where she buys most of her spices. Many of them have medicinal uses, and often the pharmacy will sell her any excess. With Kaguya’s power of eternity to preserve them, it’s hard to find any fresher in Gensokyo, and she can pick up other interesting things like dream pills while she’s there. However, getting through the bamboo forest is a chore at the best of times, and she doesn’t think Reimu would take kindly to the excursion.

She clears her throat. “Well, it’s about time you show me your knifework. Cut up the ingredients as you usually would. I’ll observe.”

To her surprise, the results are promising. Reimu confidently selects the proper knife for the job, and begins to slice the carrots at speed. Her cuts are clean, efficient, and more-or-less even; certainly, Sakuya Izayoi need not fear for her position, but definitely better than expected.

Reimu lays down her knife and puffs out her meagre chest. “Well? I told you, I cook for myself all the time. Stuff like this is easy.”

“Very good,” Alice says. It’s rare for Reimu to get genuine praise, so she allows her a moment to bask in it. “But you’ve only cut up half of the carrots.”

“So what?” Reimu asks. “They’re just going in the stew anyway. Honestly, at home, I don’t even bother cutting them up. It works just fine if you dump them in whole.”

“Cutting up the ingredients means they cook more evenly, and the increased surface area means they can both impart more flavour to the stew, and soak up more flavour themselves,” Alice explains coolly. “Did you think that people just cut up the ingredients for fun?”

“I thought they cut them up so they could use a smaller pot and don’t have to buy a bigger one,” Reimu shrugs. Her command of pot economics is not great; when drunk, she often argues that bigger pots should, in fact, cost less than smaller ones, because the middle is filled with more nothing and therefore the ratio of actual pot to air is smaller.

“I am a witch. I own cauldrons, some of them limited edition, and I still cut up my ingredients,” Alice says archly. “Chop the rest of the carrots, please.”

Reimu lets out a haughty sigh, and for a moment, considers a kitchen insurrection. But it occurs to her that people who give her a knife are usually too chicken to give her any instructions while she’s holding it, and she has a certain begrudging respect for bravery. After a moment of deliberation, she resumes cutting.

It is clear to Alice, however, that she’s lost enthusiasm for the task. Suddenly the cuts are sloppy, the sizes almost random, and her knifework is more about force than subtlety. In other words, she’s encountered a task that takes more effort than anticipated, and elected to half-ass it – something which no tutorial on blade safety will beat out of her.

“That’s enough,” Alice declares, when she can bear it no longer and the ingredients have been more or less disassembled. “Now, start the heat. While we’re waiting for things to reach temperature, we can talk about mindfulness.”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“Mindfulness in the kitchen,” she continues tersely, “is thinking about the people who’ll eat the food – whether that’s yourself, or somebody else – and adjusting the recipe to match their tastes. Adding a little more of this, or a little less of that… It’s an important part of a home cooked meal. In our case, let’s use Marisa as a test dummy, since we should both be familiar with her palate. If we were to adjust this recipe for her, what ingredients would we omit?”

She tries not to glance at the carrots as she says this. Marisa’s tastes are for Japanese food; she trends towards savoury, or at least bittersweet. For her, the carrots would be left out, or at least reduced. (The restriction does not seem to apply to sweets, for which Mairsa, like any proper lady, has a second stomach.)

“Obviously we use all of them,” Reimu says promptly. “More ingredients means more stew.”

“True. But it means nothing if the stew is bad, or she can’t finish it.”

“If she doesn’t finish it, that means more stew for me,” Reimu says smartly, reaching for a ladle. “Come on, let’s start cooking. I want to see what this fancy beef is going to taste like.”

It seems like there’s no getting through to her. For a while, Alice hovers as she cooks, giving advice on spices and seasoning that is largely ignored. Mechanically, there is nothing to teach, so it seems that they’ve reached the limit of how helpful a cookery lesson can be.

When the stew is done, it is enjoyable, but not fantastic. Alice tries a little, and then pushes her plate away; Reimu tucks in without restraint, glowing with praise for her newfound technique. When she goes home, she will no doubt go straight back to buying awful ingredients, straight back to just dumping things in the pot with no fanfare and little seasoning, and the day’s lessons will slide off her like water off a turtle’s back.

Alice can say, with some confidence, that this stew is the best thing Reimu has ever cooked. And, with almost equal confidence, that she will never cook anything like it again.

* * *

“I figured it out, you know. Why you think Reimu being bad at cooking is one of the best things about her.”

Late evening. The sky has been washed deep orange; the Hakurei Miko has gone home, pleased with the fruits of her labour and largely ignorant of her own shortcomings. Alice has retreated to the study, to sort out her thoughts and make belated attempts to start her research for the day.

On the shelf in her study – known only to her, and perhaps one other person – is a doll of Marisa Kirisame. Well made, of course, and the clothes are in significantly better condition than the real one’s; the face, however, has been left entirely and conspicuously blank. Too lifelike and the doll might be used for voodoo, or some other unsavoury purpose.

(Contrary to popular opinion, Alice has no use for voodoo dolls, and certainly would never bother making one of Marisa. To waste her talents on spiting one mouthy human would be an insult to the fine art of dollmaking.)

It has found use as a conversation partner – or, rather, a verbal punching bag for when one witch has to take out her frustrations with another. Marisa comes and goes as she pleases, without schedule or prior notice; the doll, however, is always there to hear Alice’s complaints.

“She’s too miserly to buy decent ingredients, too lazy to treat them correctly if she has them, and too self-centred to think about anything but her own tastes, and her own stomach,” she says, adjusting the brim of the doll’s hat. She’s quite proud of the hat. It took some effort to get it just right.

“Or, in other words: her being a terrible cook isn’t because she lacks talent. It’s not even because she lacks skill. It’s her personality that’s the problem,” she says, with a belaboured sigh. “And of course _you’d_ like that, wouldn’t you.”

With very careful and deliberate movements, she flicks the doll in the direct centre of where its forehead might be, had she sculpted a face. It topples backwards on the shelf, the hat spilling off as it falls.

“I don’t know what you see in her,” she says, tutting. “Just so you know, she’ll make an _awful_ housewife.”

The doll doesn’t reply, a feature that makes it mostly superior to the original Marisa. But sometimes, it lacks charm. Alice sighs; she has to concede that, sometimes, being better truly does make something worse.

Just, in fact, like that menreiki with her new Mask of Hope. She considers that for a moment. The difference between an inanimate mask and an inanimate doll aren’t so very large; perhaps being too perfect blocks off avenues for growth. In that case, deliberately introducing imperfections to her dolls might…

She dips her quill into the inkwell, and begins to write – eager to capitalise on this new line of inquiry. Perhaps there’s at least some wisdom to be gleaned from this sorry misadventure.

The moon rises over the Forest of Magic. Alice’s notes begin to take shape. Elsewhere, at the Hakurei Shrine, another witch is sitting down to enjoy a meal no better or worse than usual, and commiserating with a miko who has concluded that cooking lessons are a waste of time.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, pouring her friend another drink. “I mean, yeah. Your food’s pretty bad. But it tastes a lot better than eatin’ alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, whenever I try to write about Touhou, Alice is one of the first characters I fall on as a viewpoint -- perhaps because she's one of the few characters with her head screwed on straight. But I feel like she could also be a little condescending, and occasionally misses the point because she's already convinced herself of some other idea.


	3. Ordinary Magician & the Autonomic Mailman (Part 1)

It is a beautiful, sun-swept day in Gensokyo; the wind is lush with the scent of nature, the clouds move aimlessly across the horizon, and washing lines are sprouting like mushrooms across the land as absurdly powerful supernatural beings seize upon the chance to dry their underclothes.

On a fine day like today, there is nothing Reimu would like to do more than trot herself out to the side of the shrine to think deeply about life, the universe, and whether she should allow it to continue. She usually makes it to step one of that process before finding that thinking is not really on the agenda, and instead spends her time loafing pleasurably around on the warm wood, occasionally returning inside for drinks and snacks.

Today, however, she has actually managed to entertain a thought. Irritatingly, it is about Marisa.

What bothers her about Marisa is that she can’t pick a thing to actually _be_. Everything has to be an oxymoron with her. She’s a thief that takes nothing of value, but instead spirits away random garbage and trinkets that she _thinks_ are treasures – and then treats them like trash when she gets home, piling them high in her pigsty of a house. She’s a self-proclaimed ‘ordinary human’ who acts like a youkai and is too eccentric to be called normal in the first place. The list goes on.

Nowhere is this more evident, in Reimu’s opinion, than her attitude to cleanliness. Despite her home being terminally unclean in both the religious and conventional sense, Marisa herself is consistently the most well-bathed and best smelling person Reimu interacts with.

It does, after all, stand to reason. With magic, she can conjure water and heat the bathtub with an ease that exists almost nowhere else in Gensokyo. She’s not a youkai, so she’s more beholden to the whims of disease, and her profession involves a lot of substances you really don’t particularly want on your skin for any long period of time. Unlike other witches, she is not an obsessive hermit, and has reason enough to care about what other people think of how she smells. When you consider it, everything lines up.

It helps that she’s actually a fine soapmaker. She knows her way around a cauldron, and has all the ingredients at hand; it’s easy enough to find scented herbs in the Forest of Magic, and beeswax is surprisingly useful in spells anyway. At the very back of the Kirisame Magic Shop, sequestered behind mounds of junk, is a shelf dedicated to the little bars and oils she produces; in Reimu’s opinion this is a damn shame, because if they were where anyone could see actually see them, she’d probably do great business on them.

(She does, in fact, have a number of regular customers – chief among whom is Sanae, who fears nothing the Forest of Magic can throw at her and retains very modern sensibilities towards hair treatments. About once a week she will visit, buy a bottle of whatever seems interesting, and scrawl ‘Timotei’ on it when she gets home – just to remind herself of simpler times.)

Marisa’s affinity for water also induces her to bathe when she has no need to. Wherever there is a hot spring, Marisa can be found lounging in it; if there is a waterfall, she has searched behind it for hidden treasure. Rumour has it that she goes skinny dipping with the kappa from time to time, although there are no living eyewitnesses to confirm or deny the tale.

The only time she doesn’t smell good is when she is drunk, which Reimu doesn’t particularly mind. Generally when Marisa is drunk she’s drunk too, and smell of sake is less bothersome when you’ve spent the afternoon knocking back cups of the stuff.

The shrine maiden sighs, and takes a moment to observe a passing cloud. She is still observing it when a broomstick, hurtling through the sky at speeds that would make a lightning bolt sit up and pay attention, smashes directly through it and sends it directly to cloud heaven. Or cloud hell. Could be either. The morality of clouds isn’t Reimu’s domain, and the afterlife is only her business in that she occasionally threatens to inflict it on other people.

She pours another cup of tea, having put enough water in the pot for two. A shrine maiden’s intuition works in mysterious ways.

It is only a minute or two later that Marisa sprints up the steps to the shrine, clutching her hat (and beating out the occasional small flame). She doesn’t land directly at the shrine any more; the last time she tried, she came in far too fast and had to pull upwards at the last second, taking a strip of the roof tiles with her in the updraft – as if she’d run a razor up across the middle of a man’s head. Reimu’s response had been swift, and immense. In the outside world, they had surface-to-air missiles; in Gensokyo, they had surface-to-air _miko_ , with much the same effect.

“Oy, Reimu. We got an incident,” Marisa lies breathlessly.

Reimu knows it’s a lie because Marisa does not, generally, collaborate when it comes to incidents in progress. Oh, she’ll help out with preventing incidents, or investigating them, but when it comes to incident _resolution_ , she’ll go out of her way to try and pip Reimu to the post. It’s part of her being an oxymoron – ultimately, she’s just trying to steal things that the owner doesn’t want in the first place, namely work.

“Yes, yes. Here, sit down and drink some tea,” Reimu orders cheerfully, patting the sideboard next to her. “Do you want your cushion? Here. I’ll get your cushion for you.”

Hidden in the Hakurei Shrine’s storeroom is a cushion, bedding, and bedclothes, all specifically kept for Marisa’s frequent stays. The cushion was originally from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and is decorated with a crescent moon in the centre; around it, Marisa has roughly stitched a number of stars.

“I’m tellin ya, Reimu. It’s a primo, bona fide incident,” Marisa hisses. “Did you get any mail today?”

“I don’t get mail,” Reimu answers. “If I’m wanted at the village, they send a messenger. And nobody’s dumb enough to try and send me fliers.”

This is true, but not for the reasons she thinks it is. She has long believed that people don’t advertise to her because of her fearsome reputation. If you’re a human and the Hakurei Miko enters your life, something has gone wrong and she’s about to facilitate a solution. If you’re a youkai and the Hakurei Miko enters your life, something is _about_ to go wrong and she’s about to facilitate violence. Either way, it’s not necessarily a positive experience, and not one you’d particularly want to invite upon yourself. Such is Reimu’s logic.

The rest of Gensokyo, on the other hand, operates under the logic that advertising to somebody who has no money is a pretty stupid idea. Youkai in particular labour under the suspicion that she’ll cut up the fliers and draw talismans on the back, defeating them with the power of their own greed.

“But if ya _did_ get mail,” Marisa demands, “where would ya put it?”

“Probably in that little box in the entranceway, where people are _supposed_ to leave their shoes. Not that anybody does, but – hey! Where do you think you’re going?!” she asks as Marisa breaks into a dash. “What about your tea?!”

Marisa, apparently, didn’t care about the tea, which in Reimu’s world is a cardinal sin. She puts great stock in the diplomatic power of tea leaves; certainly, there’s no way she can entertain diplomacy without a cup or three circulating in her system. After one more brief, forlorn sip, she jumps to her feet and pads after Marisa, who is thundering towards the entranceway at full speed.

“Hah. I knew it!” the witch hisses, screeching to a halt.

Reimu peers obligingly over her shoulder to see what she’s fussing about. It’s not particularly difficult to do. The witch is well-known for being vertically challenged, something Reimu considers one of her finer points; it means it’s less work to keep up with her, since her legs are shorter.

She’s surprised to find that her little shoe rack, which contains zero shoes and probably always will, has been stuffed to the brim – not just to the brim, but overflowing, even – with envelopes.

“This has been happenin’ all over Gensokyo,” Marisa says grimly. “People are getting a whole bunch of letters all at once.”

“I don’t think that really constitutes an incident, though. Maybe the tengu finally decided to handle mail officially?”

Gensokyo is not known for its postal service, primarily because it doesn’t exist. The closest thing are the crow tengu, who might be convinced to deliver a letter if it’s on their route, and if you invest in a copy of their newspaper. (The recipient of the letter also has to invest in a newspaper before they’ll hand the letter over, of course). A decent portion of Bunbunmaru’s readership comes not from Aya’s talent as a reporter – which is dubious at best – but her speed as a courier.

Ignoring her, Marisa pulls the letters out of the rack with quick and nimble fingers, bundling them all up tightly. Most of them are in similar envelopes, all finished with a rustic yellow parchment-like effect. The witch’s mouth is a thin, straight line.

“Well, they do all look like they’re addressed to me,” Reimu murmurs, using her shoulder-peering abilities to maximum effect. “Who do you think they’re fro – _hey!_ ”

A magic circle flares on Marisa’s palm, and before Reimu can snatch them, the letters burst into flame. The air smells of char and sulphur; the conflagration is far brighter (or, more to the point, _flashier)_ than any natural flame.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Even if it’s weird that they showed up, they’re still _my_ letters! You can’t just burn my stuff in front of me. Indoors, too! Do you want to see the whole shrine go up in smoke?”

Marisa stiffens, but ignores her. She doesn’t move until the last of the letters is a film of ash on her palm; when it’s done, she snuffs the flame by snapping her hand shut. As soon as she’s done, Reimu takes the opportunity to clout her around the back of the head.

“Seriously… if you were anybody else, I’d have exterminated you by now. Quit being weird and start explaining. What’s the deal with the letters? Why’d you burn them? We didn’t even know who they were from in the first place!”

“I told ya. It’s an incident. People all over are gettin’ mail delivered, without a single tengu in sight. It keeps appearing inside people’s houses, so whoever or whatever is doin’ it, they’re breaking in. Just to deliver the mail.”

“That’s… ridiculous,” Reimu says, although she finds herself unsure. “I have barriers and wards all over the shrine. Nobody could have broken in.”

The witch shakes her head in a flurry of curls. “Alice has got ’em all over her house too. So’ve I, and so’s Patchouli. All of us woke up to a stack of mail. Whoever’s getting in, it ain’t some two-bit youkai.”

“Two-bit youkai or not, I don’t like them hanging around where I sleep.”

“It gets weirder,” Marisa says grimly. “When I checked with Alice, she’d got an apology note I wrote her a while back, but never actually sent. It shoulda been right in my study door. So someone found and delivered it to her, even though I didn’t want to send it in the first place. It’s an incident, good and proper.”

Reimu pauses. It does definitely _seem_ like an incident. But it doesn’t _feel_ like one. Her gut is a fine-tuned, precision instrument; it rarely leads her wrong. And right now, it’s screaming to her that this is a problem she doesn’t need to deal with. Left alone, it’ll fix itself. That’s what her instincts are telling her.

The real problem, as it stands, is Marisa herself. It’s nothing unusual for her to be gung-ho, but this is a little extreme, even for her. People might take offence. Youkai might take offence. And that’s the kind of thing that can make an incident all by itself.

By the time she has thought about this, the witch has already turned on her heel and begun to march out of the shrine, her broomstick held jauntily over her shoulder.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going? What are you going to do, just bust into every home in Gensokyo and burn their mail as well?” she asks, jabbing an enquiring finger at her best friend’s back.

“Nah. Just yours.”

To anybody else, it would sound like a joke. They would see Marisa’s cheeky grin, hear the wry tone in her voice, and conclude that it’s just a witty parting shot.

But Reimu has known her for years. Longer than anybody else. Long enough to know that if Marisa wants you to think something is a joke, then it isn’t.

But before she can say anything about it the witch is gone, soaring into the air without even a parting glance. In a straight line, too. There are only a few people that can catch up to Marisa at top speed, and Reimu isn’t one of them; they both know this.

She sighs and goes back to her tea, replaying the events of the morning back in her head.

Someone who breaks into sealed houses, steals letters that aren’t meant to be sent, and disappears without a trace.

Her first thought is Yukari, which means it’s not Yukari at all. (She knows how her life works by now; the first suspect is never the culprit. You don’t start getting close until suspect five or six.) Certainly, Yukari _could_ do it with her gaps, and maybe there would be value to her in spying on people’s private letters – but why deliver them afterwards, and let them know something was wrong? It was just meaningless work, and there was nothing Yukari hated more than meaningless work.

She briefly considers whether the Moriya Shrine might have a hand in it, but she doesn’t know how they could. To do this kind of thing required a certain subtlety, and Sanae’s miracles are flashy by design. All the better to show off and attract followers. And if they’d gone to the trouble of delivering everybody’s letters, they’d have taken credit for it immediately.

The kappa? Sure, Nitori could become invisible, but she can only be in one place at one time. There isn’t enough optical camo in the world to get them all outfitted. The tengu? They already deliver mail, and actually get something out of it. Why would they suddenly decide to do it for free?

It doesn’t make any sense. She flops back, frustrated.

Then there’s the question of Marisa. Marisa, who smiles widest when she’s serious. Marisa, who writes letters that she’ll never send. Marisa, who burns only her best friend’s mail. A straightforward girl with a crooked personality. Why is she so invested in _this_ incident, compared to all the others? Why is she acting like this, and what’s her plan?

If it were anybody else, she’d just beat them down – cut them off at the pass, and stop the inevitable bother that results from having a lunatic running around. But it’s Marisa. Her dishonest, sneaky, thieving best friend who she trusts perhaps more than anybody in the world. She wants to believe that whatever Marisa is doing, it’s for the best. Or at least, it won’t be _too_ stupid.

She rolls over. The sun-washed wood of the veranda is warm against her belly. The seasons are in order; there is no mist hanging over the land; the world is still ruled by natural law. More importantly, nobody has come to complain yet. Regardless of what Marisa is doing or what’s going on, her instincts tell her:

It is not yet time for the Hakurei Miko to move.

So, regretfully, reluctantly, and strictly in service of the greater good…

She sits back, yawns, and loafs in the same spot for the rest of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't feel super confident about this one -- I sorta wish I'd done it in past tense, although I'm trying to polish up my present tense fiction lately. But I figure that I'll do enough touhou stories over time that one or two that it's acceptable for one or two to not be bangers.
> 
> Also, I went on a long tangent about soap for basically no reason. Prepare yourself, because that's pretty much the Vulp Experience.


	4. Ordinary Magician & the Autonomic Mailman (Part 2)

The moon is high over the human village; it is midnight, the witching hour, when all sane and normal humans dive underneath their covers and fear to roam the streets. Those that remain beneath the pale moonlight are either drunk, foolish, or perhaps not even human at all.

Ideally, Aya Shameimaru thinks, they are all three.

Despite the late hour, the lights of Geidontei have not dimmed – although nobody will remember seeing them come the morning. She makes her way towards it, tipping her cap amiably to a local farmer who is scurrying home to an angry wife. (The human village has just as much gossip as the youkai world, she finds; it’s a shame she can’t publish it without blowing her cover).

A youkai pub. Even though she already stopped by yesterday, her pulse quickens at the thought. So much potential. So much opportunity! A place for youkai of every stripe to gather, drink too much, and let their tongues run away with them. A place for gossip and indiscretions, alcoholism and intrigue. In other words, it was a perfect source of material for the Bunbunmaru, and conveniently located in a place where few other news tengu deigned to tread. The smell of opportunity whets her lips even more than the smell of stewed vegetables, no matter how well Miyoi cooks them.

There is just one problem: one very small, very large problem. And her name is Suika Ibuki.

Where there is alcohol, there are oni, and Aya has never seen Geidontei open late without Suika holding down the bar. She arrives first, leaves last, and laughs loudest; it feels as though even the very wood of the building is suffused with her voice.

For most youkai, who are blessed in their youth and ignorance of history, she is something of a spectacle. Oni are rare above ground, and even if they weren’t, seeing a woman with the body of a child knock back enough beer to fell an elephant is entertainment enough.

Aya, though, is old enough to know better – far, far better than most. The tengu and the oni have had a long and… _fruitful_ association, of which Suika is a potent reminder. It is a sobering thought that the little lady two stools to her left once sat among the sages of Gensokyo, and kept that company well; that she was a Deva of the Moutain, who ruled through strength of arm and force of will alone. Those little fists have crushed rebellions. Those little feet have shaken the earth itself.

In other words, it’s like bumping into her old manager every time she walks into the bar. And when your old manager buys you a round, it can be very difficult to refuse. She’s still not quite sure she’d consider Suika a _friend_ , but she certainly feels like she’s become the oni’s new favourite plaything.

“Welcome, Miss Shameimaru!” The pub’s poster girl greets her as enters; it seems she has a talent for remembering the names of her returning customers. “Would you like your usual?”

“Absolutely not, but that might be what I get,” Aya says wryly. Her ‘usual’, at this point, is measured in kegs; trying to go beer for beer with an oni is a dangerous and expensive habit. “Let’s just start with some of your cooking, and we’ll see how the night develops.”

“Of course. Is there anything in particular you’d like?”

“Surprise me. So far, it’s all been good.” Her nose wrinkles. “You know, I’ve actually been thinking about writing a review for this place in my paper. Should attract plenty of business.”

“Please don’t,” Miyoi says sharply; even the whale-shaped hat she wears seems to glower in disapproval. “If our human customers find out about our midnight hour, Geidontei might end up shutting its doors for good.”

“Shame. As the head writer–” And editor, and typesetter, and photographer, and fact checker, and printer, and saleswoman and all the other little odd jobs that she isn’t actually very good at because they don’t interest her and she’s got deadlines to make, “–of Gensokyo’s _most_ reputable newspaper, I’d be happy to feature you at any time. For a little discount on my tab, of course.”

Miyoi is silent, but it is a very polite kind of silence – the picture of a bartender who is listening to the sob story of a valued patron. Not many youkai could manage such a feat; Aya notes it with interest. Youkai who live among humans are a story that’s still developing, and one she’s watching eagerly.

A familiar drunken voice floats over from a barstool. “Don’t worry about your tab. I got it for you. For old time’s sake, eh?”

It is worth noting that Suika does not slur her words. She _should_ , by all rights; her syllables should slide and crash into each other like cats running across a polished wooden floor, lubricated by the sheer amount of alcohol she consumes. But they don’t. She has spent so much time talking while drunk that she’s mastered the art, and there’s no difference in her speech whether she’s paralytic or stone sober – not that any living creature can claim to have seen the latter.

But she _should_ slur. The laws of physics demand it. Basic decency demands it. And so, if you aren’t paying attention, you might find your mind inserting a little drunken slurring where none actually exists. The incongruity between what the brain hears and what the ears report make listening to her something of a unique experience; half of the time, you don’t know whether she’s drunk, or you are.

Her voice is crisp and refreshing, at least for tonight. One of her favourite party tricks – and what is an oni without a party trick? – is to change the density of air in her lungs and around her vocal chords to amusing effect. She can run the gamut from a mouse on helium to an elephant singing opera, depending on her mood – another thing that makes listening to her faintly disorienting. Especially when she shrinks herself to the size of a china doll and then speaks to you in an earth-rumbling baritone.

“Miyoi, we’re takin’ one of the back booths,” the oni continues, leaping off her stool and landing on unsteady feet. “Get me… hm. A couple cups of that umeshu I put in the back room. I’m going easy on her tonight,” she says, jerking a thumb towards Aya.

“Ayaya… I feel like a fish in a net. A tengu, spirited away by an oni… well, I suppose that’s the order of things.” Aya keeps her voice low as Suika wobbles away in her distinctive gait; even Miyoi seems to be giving her a look of vague pity. They both know she’s in for a rough night. “Whatever you’re making for the food, double my order. I’ll need something to soak up the booze.”

Miyoi nods, jots something down in her notebook, and rushes away to the next table. Aya follows in the oni’s footsteps, watching the tips of her her horns sway back and forth at eye level. Suika’s fetters rattle and clink as she staggers onwards; she is always making noise, always swaying back and forth, always sowing her oddly benign havoc. A little pandemonium on legs. She takes them to a booth, tucked away in the corner, as private as could be expected in this kind of establishment.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Aya asks as she sits down. She takes her notepad and pen out of her pocket and sets them on the table. Just as a precaution, of course. It’s useless to go to a pub for information if you’re going to get too drunk to remember any of it, but she can at least write some of it down and end up with something semi-salvageable in the morning. She always has fun trying to puzzle out her notes the morning after; her handwriting generally gets more and more indecipherable as the night wears on. “Wait, don’t tell me. You’ve finally decided to purchase a subscription to Bunbunmaru?!”

“Nobody who actually knows you is dumb enough to read your paper,” Suika retorts. Aya winces. Oni are known for their honesty, and for their brutality; often, they combine the two. “I just wanted to know if you were gonna concede the bet early.”

The bet? The bet. The bet! Aya tries the words out several times in her mind, trying to see if changing the intonation will unveil their meaning. The question mark doesn’t do much for her, honestly. It isn’t emphatic enough. The exclamation mark, though, has some real legs to it. Everything sounds better with exclamation marks, in her opinion. The more, the better. It’s a philosophy she applies daily with the Bunbunmaru, to mixed results.

There is time for Miyoi to arrive with stewed vegetables, savoury snacks and the first drinks of the evening before she finally stumbles onto the first hazy suggestions of an answer. “Eh…? Something about… delivering things? I don’t remember exactly.”

Suika leans forward, slouching across the table as if she were relaxing in her own home. “Oh? You don’t remember how, last time, you got too big for your bloomers after your fifth bottle and started mouthing off?” A wicked grin spreads across the oni’s face as she watches Aya’s expression. “Somethin’ like: ‘Oh, you oni, you think you’re so tough, but try running a newspaper. You’d be way too much of a musclehead to manage a delivery schedule’. Wasn’t that what you said?”

“Ahaha. Ha. I… might remember having said something like that.”

“You did. And do you know what I said? I said, ‘Fine. You wanna make it a competition? I bet that next week, I can deliver more letters than you can, even though I’m not a tengu and I don’t have a delivery route.’ And you agreed.” She stretches out her arms as far as they’ll go, and cracks her fingers ominously. “So. This was day one. How many letters did you deliver on your route?”

Aya gulps. She notices that Suika is very deliberately not telling her _what_ she bet, which implies it is something deeply horrifying, and wonders if she can weasel out of it by saying she didn’t remember and therefore wasn’t actually competing. From what she can tell, the odds aren’t great. She _did_ know about the bet, after all – for the minutes or hours before she blacked out and forgot the entire evening. She’d received and understood the challenge, and what she did after that was her own problem as far as the oni was concerned.

“None,” she moans, knowing that Suika already knows the answer. “There were no delivery requests today.”

“Right. And that’s because I got ’em _all_. I split myself into a mist, spread myself out over all Gensokyo, went into people’s houses and took all their letters. Every envelope with a name on it, I took,” the oni says, grinning wickedly.

“Ayayaya… What a brute force solution.”

“I know, right? After that, I just turned myself into a squad of mini-mes and started delivering. I got about half of it done today, and after tomorrow, every single letter in Gensokyo’s gonna have been delivered.” The grin widens; the teeth are sharp. “If you don’t think you can win, I’ll generously allow you to concede early. All this mail business is cutting into my drinking time.”

Aya groaned. _This_ was why you didn’t get into direct competitions with the truly high rank youkai. There’s always _something_ , some way that they can leverage their ridiculous abilities against you. “Ahhhh… Just out of interest, what did I actually bet? I was drunk at the time.”

“You said that if I could make more deliveries than you, you’d let me pluck your tail feathers.”

Aya stares back blankly. “I don’t _have_ tail feathers. I’m a crow tengu, but we’re not _that_ closely associated with birds.”

“Well, I’ll find that out for myself, won’t I?” The oni fixes her with a drunken, lecherous stare. “If you concede early, we can go somewhere private before the skirt comes off.”

“Dang. I hate to intervene just as it’s gettin’ fun, but I’m gonna need to talk to you two about somethin’.”

Both youkai snap their heads towards the new voice, and they find Marisa Kirisame, leaning carelessly over the booth divider. She’s not wearing her hat or her witch’s dress; it’s her blonde hair and fearless smile that sets her apart from any other human in the village. Without any fanfare, she climbs over the divider and plops down into the seat next to Aya.

“How long have you been listening in on us?” Aya asks.

“The whole time. I came in right after you, ya know? I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this mail thing all day, and I figured, well, the mail’s tengu business, right? So if I follow the most suspicious tengu, I’m bound to stumble onto somethin’.”

“What’s the problem with the mail?” Suika asks. “Did I deliver stuff to the wrong place?”

“Nah. You just delivered it.” With perfect confidence, the witch helps herself to some of Aya’s food and a sip of the umeshu before carrying on. “Sorry, but I’m gonna have to ask ya to cut that out.” She thinks for a second, which is long enough for her to finish Aya’s drink. “Actually, scratch that. You can keep deliverin’ letters to people, but just quit delivering them to Reimu.”

The table falls quiet for minute. Two youkai minds, with centuries of life experience, quietly spin their wheels.

“Oh, I get it. You were writing her _love letters_ ,” Aya smirks. “This is going in the Bunbunmaru for sure. ‘A forbidden romance between Gensokyo’s foremost incident specialists! The forlorn witch, writing sweet letters to the Hakurei Miko! A star-crossed love!’ It’ll sell like hot cakes!”

“Oh, right. I thought it was weird that so many of yours were on fancy paper. Love letters, huh? That’s kinda nostalgic. Although it’s definitely the coward’s way of doing things,” Suika says. For a moment, her face softens; there’s some level of sympathy there, although it is quickly swallowed up by something more combative. “So let me get this straight. You’re really gonna try and force us to stop our bet, because you’re too much of a chicken to let her see your letters?”

As stealthily as she can, Aya begins to grope for her camera. At the rate things are going, there’s no _way_ the night is going to end without a spellcard duel. She can already see the terms being drawn up: if Marisa takes the victory, the whole delivery bet is called off. And if Suika takes the victory? It’s just wild speculation on her part, but she knows that Suika values honesty, and has a soft spot for humans and their wacky antics. Particularly when it comes to Reimu. If Suika wins, then she’ll probably make Marisa march up to the miko and deliver her love letters by hand – an oni’s gentle, yet forceful support for a kindling romance. Either way, it’s going to be fascinating. Top shelf news, and subscriptions for miles. She shivers in anticipation at the thought.

“Nah, it ain’t about the love letters. I wrote those to a whole bunch of people,” Marisa grins. “Spent most of the day runnin’ around and explaining myself.”

Aya blinks. It’s not the spellcard duel she was looking for, but it might be something even better. “Ayayaya… Young people nowadays have such loose morals.”

“Like you were any better when you were her age,” Suika snaps back.

“It ain’t even like that,” the witch carries on. “It’s about magic. Some of my spells are powered by love, right? But sometimes, there’s not gonna be love just floating around that you can draw on, especially not in a spellcard duel. So, you gotta condense it down. Put it in a tangible form,” she says, striking her palm with a fist. “Easiest way to do that is with a love letter. That way, no matter what, you’ve always got it on tap.”

“How boring.”

“Right? But yeah, that’s why I was writing love letters to folks. Testing out all the variables, seeing what makes the best fuel for the mini-hakkero. Believe it or not, Reimu actually got the least out of anybody,” Marisa grins. “It ain’t about love letters. It’s about the other ones. The ones that aren’t from me. Here, take a look.”

She passes a letter over to them – one that’s already had the seal broken, and is a little dog-eared from being in her pocket. Everything Marisa handles becomes dog-eared in short order.

“I swiped this one from her this morning, and then burned the rest. You wanna do the orders, Newspaper Girl?”

“Let’s see here… ‘To the Hakurei Pig...’ Wait, Hakurei Pig? ‘If we should ever cross paths again, know that’… ‘curses upon your household’… With a horse?” Aya blinks, and shakes her head in disbelief. “This is vile. I’m impressed.”

“Yup. I’ve seen quite a few letters for her like that. Sometimes it’s from the human villagers, but a lot of the time, it’s from random youkai. I see them when I’m, uh… browsing,” Marisa explains, dancing around her own acquisitive habits.

“But I thought she got along well with youkai? The Hakurei is basically a youkai shrine, after all.”

“Sure, with the big, spooky ones who can look after themselves. The small fry she just bats aside without really thinking about it? Not so much. Of course, they don’t have the guts to tell her what they think of her in person, or even get their letters delivered, because she’d definitely go after them. So, you get stuff like this.” Marisa shakes her head slowly. “So, that’s about the size of it. The whole love letter thing ain’t here nor there. But I don’t want Reimu to have to deal with seein’ this kinda junk. How about it? Suika?”

The oni weighs her options, her hand drifting over to her cup. She downs it contemplatively.

“Well, it’s a better reason than I gave you credit for. And I don’t think you’ve been lying to me – much, anyway. So I guess I could hold off – on a few conditions.”

“Shoot.”

“First off, we gotta settle the bet. I’ll call the whole thing off – including the tail feathers – but only if Miss Bunbunmaru here acknowledges the loss.”

“Done and done,” Aya says, with a sigh of relief. “Ayayaya… I was going to concede anyway.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted.” The oni turns a surprisingly steady gaze to her, even though the scent of sake lingers in the air. “You may not be my underling any more, but I don’t want you losing respect for me. When you start mouthing off and saying I can’t beat you, I’ll beat you down every time. Got it?”

Aya winces. Is that supposed to be a compliment? Is she meant to feel like her respect is valuable? Or is it just an old, powerful youkai flexing her power? Even with an honest oni, things are never straightforward in Gensokyo.

“Second of all, you,” Suika says, turning her eye to Marisa, “gotta answer me a question. You said Reimu got the least letters from you out of anyone. Why’s that?”

For the first time in the whole conversation, the witch looks uncomfortable. She takes another sip of Aya’s umeshu – for courage, no doubt. “Well… y’know. It’s because the ones for Reimu are the ones I actually _use_. They work better.” She touches a finger to one of her forelocks, no doubt wishing she had worn her hat tonight; she has no wide, witchy brim to hide her face behind. “Couldn’t tell ya why. Must be because she’s a wood element, or somethin’ like that. They burn real good.”

“That right?” the oni asks, grinning. She’s sharp enough to know when she’s being lied to – and she’s spent enough time with humans, and with Yukari, to know when to let it pass. “Last condition: you’ve been making merry with our booze for a while now, so you’re stuck drinking with us tonight. And the next round’s on you.”

“Booze is probably the least toxic thing I handle from day to day, so I guess I’m in.”

“Oh yeah? Mayoi got something in the other day that I guarantee will change your mind. You’d better know when to tap out.” She pauses. “And, like I said, I will absolutely not deliver any letters from now on.”

Aya sits back, breathes a sigh of relief, and prepares herself to fade into the background. In the end, she’s gained nothing from tonight – no saleable news, no danmaku photographs. Actually, the only thing she’s gotten from it all is a headache. But that’s par for the course. Suika has a new chew toy, and she’s sure that Marisa will let some interesting stories slip when she gets drunk enough. It will all work out.  
  


* * *

  
A few days later, Reimu finds herself at Geidontei – thirsty, as always, for sake. Miyoi smiles at her, and presses a stack of letters into her hands: all on surprisingly fine stationary, and all addressed in a scruffy, but surprisingly charming, hand.

“Somebody left behind these in the pub the other day, so I kept them for you,” Geidontei’s poster girl says with a professional smile. “One of our late-night patrons.”

“Tch. There’s always got to be _something_. I can’t even go for a drink without there being _something_ ,” the miko sighs. “I thought Marisa said she solved the whole letter thing, but I guess not. You’d better make my order a double, Miyoi.” She grimaces. “I think I’m going to need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote a long author's note, but accidentally pressed back and lost it. Here's the tl;dr bulletpoint recap:  
> -Suika is my favourite  
> -She didn't turn out quite like I wanted in terms of personality, lacks vibrancy  
> -Piece did teach me a lot about how I view Aya & Suika's relationship and issues that would face them, which is valuable  
> -Overall, worthwhile to have written.
> 
> Sorry for the truncated note!


End file.
